David Morningstar wrote on Oct 12
th, 2009 at 10:24am:
Is there any reason why a bag of ammo carried over the elbow would be preferable to one carried across the body at the waist?
While slinging today, I tried to do some "Greeks" with an open ammo bag hung over my left elbow. The feeling was rather unusual but not "impossible", and I could imagine a professional slinger of the 5th century BC with some experience slinging this way, at least for some time.
Then I had another idea: Maybe the bag is carried this way because, if you have different types of ammo in it (glandes, ceramics, stones), you can pick your next (type of) shot quickly out of the bag without turning your eyes away from what is happening in front of you. This could be extremely useful in a combat situation like the depicted scene, when there are enemy archers shooting at you and you must be constantly watching them in order to maybe make a step aside or duck down or so at the right moment. Turning your eyes away and down to an open waist bag could be fatal when you are in the line of fire.
Of course, you could also pick your ammo from a waist or shoulder bag without looking inside at all, just by touching the shots with your fingers, steadily watching to the enemy. But this is only useful if you have only one kind of ammo (or if you don't care). If you carry different sorts for different purposes (small, big, heavy, light, fragile, solid, ovoid, spherical etc) and want to choose your next shot, it seems a safer, more practical and quicker method to have the bag in front of you. Well, just an idea.